Coral Gables voters to decide: Keep incumbent Castro or try newcomer Menendez?

Coral Gables voters in November will decide whether to reelect Commissioner Melissa Castro for a second term or give first-time candidate Nestor Menendez a chance to represent them.

The two are competing for the Group IV seat, one of three city races voters will weigh in on. Voters will also decide whether to reelect Mayor Vince Lago for a fourth and final term and who should take over for outgoing Commissioner Ariel Fernandez, who has chosen not to run for reelection.

Here’s what to know about the Group IV race:

Who is running for Coral Gables Commissioner Group IV?

Melissa Castro – incumbent

Castro in April 2023 became the first Colombian elected to serve on the City Commission — she won the runoff race for Group IV at the time with about 59% of the vote — and has since positioned herself as Lago’s most vocal opponent.

She’s previously served on several committees with the Florida League of Cities, a statewide nonpartisan association that lobbies in Tallahassee for cities, and she was recently appointed chair of the group’s development, code compliance and redevelopment committee. She was named a “Home Rule Hero” by the organization this year, an award given to local government leaders “who went above and beyond during the Legislative Session to advocate for Florida’s cities.”

In the Gables, she’s frequently at odds with Lago, Vice Mayor Rhonda Anderson and Commissioner Richard Lara and says her dissent is an example of how she’s fighting for residents. She argues that without her voice, the city will have a commission that nearly always agrees with Lago and will see “buildings go up like if it’s Brickell 2.0.”

She’s known to vote against development projects, though Castro says it’s not a sign that she’s “anti-development” but rather supports “smart development.”

Castro is currently under investigation by the Florida Commission on Ethics, which is looking into whether the commissioner violated state ethics laws and used her city position to benefit her permit-expediting business. The commission determined in January that there was probable cause to move forward with its investigation, which is ongoing. Castro has denied wrongdoing and said she believes she’ll be cleared.

The commissioner also recently faced questions from Lago, Anderson and Lara about whether she improperly used city funds to cover a trip to Tallahassee where she appeared for a hearing in her ethics case days before representing the city at a conference there. Castro said she did not charge the city for personal expenses and called those allegations an attempt to hurt her reelection campaign.

Critics also continue to bring up Castro’s decision to vote alongside Fernandez and then-Commissioner Kirk Menendez in 2023 to nearly double commissioners’ salaries to $65,000, and her vote in 2024 to hire retired U.S. Marshal Amos Rojas Jr. to replace City Manager Peter Iglesias, whom they’d voted to fire, without a national search. Both decisions were reverted by the current commission.

Castro defends her decisions. Earlier this year, she doubled down on her vote to appoint Rojas, and later, Alberto Parjus, to serve as city manager, describing it as a decision that had to be made quickly in 2024 because the city needed an administrative leader urgently. She also stands by her vote to raise salaries.

“I didn’t need the money, I didn’t need the scandal. I thought it was the right thing to do” and would make it easier for a more diverse group of residents to run for office, she told the Herald in a recent interview, explaining that the raises had been discussed in several public meetings.

Castro is endorsed by Miami Realtors, the city’s police and firefighters union and Coral Gables Democrats. Her campaign has raised over $15,000. While the roles of Coral Gables mayor and commissioner are nonpartisan, Castro is registered with no party affiliation, while Menendez is a registered Republican.

Nestor Menendez – challenger

Menendez is an of-counsel attorney at DiFalco and Fernandez LLLP who has previously served on several city boards. He was appointed by Commissioner Richard Lara to serve on the city’s charter review committee and recently resigned from the city’s planning and zoning board to run for office. He also previously served as Vice Mayor Rhonda Anderson’s appointment on the city’s transportation advisory board. He is not related to former Gables Commissioner Kirk Menendez.

Menendez said he hasn’t accepted any endorsements because he wants to earn the vote from residents through his door knocking. He’s raised over $124,000 in campaign donations, the most for a campaign account of any Gables candidate in the 2026 election.

He’s found a supporter in Lago, who described Menendez to the Herald as “an amazingly qualified individual” whose experience on the various city boards “has prepared him for the position of commissioner.”

“I’m impressed by his thought process, by the fact that we can agree to disagree, be collegial,” Lago said, noting that the two have previously disagreed on certain referendums.

Like Dominique “Nikki” Whiting, who is running for the open Fernandez seat, Menendez takes issue with people questioning whether he’ll be an independent voice.

“Shouldn’t we all be independent voices up there? … We should be five independent voices bringing in our own experiences, our own work, our own point of view, our own research, our own experiences from talking with residents,” he said, noting that while it’s natural to see disagreements, the goal of a commission should be to work together and compromise to create solutions for residents.

Why are they running?

Castro, 41, said she’s running for a second term to continue fighting for residents. If she’s reelected, she said she might consider running for mayor in 2028.

“I’m a person that when I start something, I finish it, and I’m gonna put my 100%,” Castro said. “I’m a person of my word, and I give my word to the people who elected me, and that holds a lot of weight.”

One of her proudest accomplishments, she said, is an initiative she created early on in her term to notify residents about proposed developments that are within a 1,500-foot radius of them through door hangers. The goal, she said, is to make sure residents are “involved in shaping development that’s coming before them and is gonna affect their quality of life.”

Menendez previously told the Herald he’s running to “build a community for my daughters and their generation and affect public policy in the most direct and effective way.”

Menendez, the son of a Bay of Pigs veteran, said that while he grew up in Miami, he was always in the Gables, playing football at the city’s youth center, visiting his sister who is a longtime Gables resident and later studying at UM’s law school. In 2020, he and his wife bought a home in the city, and Menendez eventually began volunteering on various city boards.

“At the end of the day, we were just giving recommendations to the commission,” said the 50-year-old Menendez, explaining that while the work that advisory board volunteers do is important, he realized that “if I really wanted to be effective, I needed to have a seat at the table.”

He chose to run against Castro because he said he didn’t “agree with a lot of the decisions” that she was making.

Priorities

Castro says residents continue to be concerned about development, corruption and public safety, including traffic-calming measures. If reelected, Castro said she plans to “continue putting money back into taxpayers’ pockets,” pointing to the residential parking discount pilot program she sponsored and her previous failed attempts to lower the property tax rate.

Castro said she will also make good on her promise to “follow the money” and announce during commission meetings if any commissioner received a campaign contribution from developers ahead of a project vote. Under Florida law, elected officials are not required to recuse themselves from a vote just because they received a campaign contribution. It’s up to commissioners to decide whether they can vote impartially on a project.

Although developers are permitted to contribute to political campaigns, Castro hopes that more public notice of the donations will push developers to stop contributing to commissioners and create an environment where “these developments are voted on merit because they’re in the best interest of the city.”

She also doesn’t agree with the city’s current strategy — of which Lago is a proponent — of approving certain variance requests from developers in return for park space.

“You know what you’re buying. You know the zoning and what you’re buying,” Castro said, adding that she believes the city is more stringent with residents than it is with developers when it comes to variances. She would like to work on legislation that would require developers to decide from the beginning whether they would go through the city or county’s zoning approval process, instead of threatening the city with switching to the county midway through the process.

If elected, Menendez said he wants to work on addressing the everyday problems residents have, such as sidewalk repairs and street maintenance. He wants to be part of the city’s efforts to improve traffic calming and make the city more walkable.

He’s also interested in exploring ways to make it easier and cheaper for residents to convert their homes from septic to sewer, something the city is currently exploring and a topic Anderson has also expressed concern about.

“I just think we need to figure out a way to work with the residents to make it a reality,” said Menendez, explaining that he would like to find grants and other funding opportunities to reduce the financial burden on residents.

“It’s very important to always remember that this is for the benefit not only of our community but our waterways,” he added.

He praised many of the city’s current efforts to improve quality of life during his interview with the Miami Herald, including Lago’s work to bring more parks to the downtown area and Lara’s same-day residential permit program. He wants to help steer the commission into “really boring commission meetings” with spirited debates instead of the drama-filled marathons residents have become accustomed to.

“I want to build bridges. I want to build coalitions. I want compromise. I want to bridge those gaps between my colleagues and, most importantly, the residents and the commission,” he said.

He also said one goal, if elected, is to search for his eventual replacement — “a good person who puts the community first, who’s going to work hard, who’s going to listen to the residents, who’s done the work” because right now, he’s just thinking of serving four years to make sure he can spend time with his young daughters.

How to vote

Early voting began Monday, Oct. 19. If you want to vote on Election Day, which is Tuesday, Nov. 3, polls open at 7 a.m. and close at 7 p.m. For people who like to vote-by-mail, that’s also the deadline to return your ballot. Remember, the Elections Department must receive your vote-by-mail ballot by 7 p.m. on Election Day in order for it to count.

For a , visit the Miami-Dade County Supervisor of Elections website. To find your voting location for Election Day, review your voter registration card or your voter information online on the Elections website.